Hello and welcome to The Marketing Blog. My name is Michael Fleischner and this blog has been developed to share my more than 14 years of Marketing experience with anyone interested in learning more about marketing or Internet marketing. The Marketing Blog markets marketing simple and covers all aspects of marketing with a particular focus on internet marketing.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Before you begin promoting your website, give some thought to the design and layout of your web pages. Whether you're building a website, landing page, or simply updating your site, be sure to follow some of the basics of good SEO. Here are a few ideas to consider.

1. Is your web page easy to read (by both search engine spiders and browsers)? Use common fonts, sizes, and layouts. Keep things simple. If users can't intuitively navigate your page, you're going to lose them. Write for your lowest common denominator and don't assume that everyone navigates the page as you do.2. Is you code W3C compliant? The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web (W3). The consortium is headed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the primary author of the original URL, HTTP, and HTML specifications. Your code should meet these industry standards.

3. Meta tags. Do you have them? Are they in place? Are they written correctly? Meta tags are important for a whole host of reasons. Not the least of which is that search engines rely on them to better understand the content of your web page. Make sure they are in properly in place

4. Use of h1 tags. The header tags of h1, h2, and h3 are key to search engine optimization. Using these tags lets the search engine know that the content you're using is important. Place you keyword(s) between these tags when possible.

5. On-page keyword placement. Use your keywords in appropriate places on your web page. I would argue that keyword density really isn't all that important anymore. More important is you placement relative to other text on the page. Specifically, be sure to place your keyword within the first 25 and last 25 words of text on you web page. Lastly, bold, italicize and underline your keyword at least once on the page you're optimization.

Follow these basic on-page optimization techniques to improve overall search engine rankings. As with and SEO effort, multiple components must be executed well in order to see dramatic results in your search engine result placements. Begin with a strong foundation (on-page optimization). This allows for your seo efforts to generate very tangible results.